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Milwaukee runners head back to Boston Marathon

Michelle Tanem competes in the 2013 Boston Marathon. It was the first Boston Marathon after more than 50 other marathons for the mother of three from South Milwaukee. Her husband was close to the second bomb, but wasn’t injured.

Michael Gordon heard the blasts a few blocks away, but it was hard to tell exactly what they were. A truck, maybe, hitting a huge pothole?

Bridget Boyle was already in the cab on the way back to her hotel, her medal around her neck, but when she got in her room and flipped on the TV to check on the race, she froze, shocked by what she saw.

Luai Tabbal saw it, too, the first live, unedited images on the Boston television stations. Bone fragments. Body parts. Blood. He was horrified. What happened?

Christine Wodke was still on the course in the last wave of runners, between Miles 23 and 24, when worried text messages started lighting up every cellphone. Are they OK?

Michelle Tanem was choking back tears during the final three blocks as realization set in: I am going to finish my first Boston Marathon. She decided she would let her emotions out only when she saw her husband. She passed through the finish chutes and planned to head toward their meeting place when one boom thundered and then another. She didn't know that her husband was stuck in a crowd just across the street from the second bomb.

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They all began the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, as exceptional Milwaukee-area runners. To them, the day was a crowning achievement for all their work and the sacrifice to meet the race's qualifying times and gain admission to the greatest amateur sporting event in the country.

The bombs also tore through more than 260 other runners and spectators.

As hospitals filled with the injured victims, the city of Boston shut down so police and investigators could track down the Tsarnaevs, who also allegedly shot and killed officer Sean Collier during a later standoff.

Boston police found the brothers within days — Tamerlan died in a shootout; Dzhokhar was eventually captured — and order, relatively speaking, was restored.

A year later, the Boston Marathon bombing survivors are moving on as best they can. Some required multiple surgeries and faced months of rehabilitation. Some amputees are dancing and running on prosthetic legs.

Maybe the rest of us had forgotten a little.

But Gordon, Boyle, Tabbal, Wodke and Tanem will never forget. Nor will the Tom Dellemann family, which has a special tribute planned.

They all simply had to return for this year's Boston Marathon on Monday.

"I remember sitting there watching, in that hotel room, with the guys," said Tabbal, a veteran of 20 marathons. "And we said, this is going to change big major marathons forever. Some of us started to question then, should we come back?

"And I said, 'Look guys, I know I am coming back next year. I have to. Because if I don't, we let these guys win. And we can't let that happen.'"

And so their purpose, which as runners had always been shared, has become broader. Communal. It's not just about four months of running on ice and sleet in the dead of Wisconsin winter to train. Or pushing through their fatigue over Heartbreak Hill. Not this year.

Together, they will reclaim what is rightfully theirs: a 26.2-mile run from a western suburb to the heart of Boston, through diverse neighborhoods and rolling hills, on Patriots Day and Marathon Monday, when students are off from school and parents are on holiday. They will share the streets with banners that read: "We Run Together."

"I just really wanted to go back and say thank you," said Gordon. "I still don't know why would anyone mar an event that is nothing but selfless. To target this, it's sad. It kind of hits you to the core.

"But runners are really like-minded individuals. And the whole of our community is greater than what happened last year."

Unfinished business

Wodke was at the 23-mile mark last year when her running companion and guide, Cheryl Monnat, started getting a flurry of text messages and warnings about an explosion.

Wodke, 56, of Bay View, runs with a guide because she needs someone to carry her sports drink and keep an eye on her, to make sure that if she falls or falters, she has help. Wodke has Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a neurological disorder. She qualified for Boston in the mobility impaired division and is raising awareness for the neuromuscular disease.

By the time Wodke and Monnat got to Mile 25, just a mile from the finish, "The police said, 'You're done,'" said Wodke.

She was not allowed to finish and was diverted away from the end.

Wodke and Monnat are going back this year as two of 5,633 runners who weren't allowed to finish the Boston Marathon and therefore were granted an automatic qualifier this year.

"We had to go, she kind of got cheated last year (too)," Wodke said of her longtime running friend.

The training has been a challenge for Wodke. The disease makes her feet burn and gives her extreme fatigue. It was so bad she quit running 18 years ago, after the Lakefront Marathon in 1996, when her symptoms persisted, injuries cropped up, she ran slower and doctors shrugged their shoulders.

"I stopped competing because I didn't know what was going on," she said.

But after her diagnosis, and some management of her pain, blisters and cramps that come with CMT, she started running again in 2010.

"I love running, but I know I'm not going to be able to do it forever," said Wodke.

But for Wodke, the Boston Marathon is more than a challenge. It's about the spectators who bring their cups of water and their orange slices, or the little boy last year who gave her his last gummy bear.

"There are no other crowds like Boston. I'm the back-of-the-pack runner, in the last wave, and yet they cheer for you like you're the first one through," said Wodke. "They will stay there until the last one goes through. And you feel that, as a runner.

"When the attacks happened, it hit me really hard, especially thinking of that little boy at the finish line (who was killed). I saw little kids like that all over the race. I felt for the people of Boston.

"It is going to be very emotional this year. I've had that little bit of incompleteness. This is a little closure for me. It's minor compared to what other people went through — but I would like to finish.

"I start to tear up when I read about Boston. I think how I would feel if this would happen to my city. This is my chance to go back and support them and thank them."

The Dellemann family also has some unfinished business in Boston.

In 2012, Tom Dellemann, 42, from Pewaukee, was diagnosed with an extremely rare form of leukemia called T-cell prolymphocytic leukemia. After chemotherapy, he needed a bone marrow transplant, but he could never receive one because he kept picking up different viruses and fungi and they never found a perfect match for him.

"He was feeling good the first few months of 2013 so he wrote the Boston Marathon explaining it was his dream to run it," said his sister-in-law Mary Matyas. "They granted him a medical hardship entry."

Dellemann ran the marathon but was stopped a half-mile short due to the bombs. And then last year, his cancer came back even more aggressively than before.

"He fought longer and harder than anyone else the doctors had ever seen," said Matyas, "but he lost the fight in January of this year."

Julie Dellemann, Tom's wife, wrote the Boston Marathon explaining the story and asked if she could run in his honor to cross the finish line for him. She had run half marathons in the past, but never a full. Boston granted her entry and she will run in his memory.

A 'part of that special day'

Long before Gordon was a sports medicine doctor with a private practice, and the team orthopedic surgeon for the Milwaukee Bucks and Marquette University, he was in medical school at Harvard University. He watched a friend run the Boston Marathon, which is near campus around Mile 24. Gordon took up running the next week and ran the marathon the next year, 1995.

As a bandit.

Arriving at the back of the last wave of runners with nothing more than a bottle of Gatorade, a pack of gum, a garbage bag to keep him warm and a $20 bill, he joined in the race. He estimates as many as 5,000 so-called unofficial bandits ran Boston annually and were sort of accepted by the running community as the rebels.

He finished — thanks to those water stations — and while he didn't get an official medal, of course, he was hooked.

The 42-year-old from Milwaukee has done 20 marathons in all; this will be his sixth Boston Marathon and he runs with an official tag now. He was there last year, just a few blocks away, when he heard the booms.

"The people of Boston and the police force were just unbelievable, how quickly they responded," said Gordon. "The runners and the spectators jumped right in to help."

Boyle, 45, of Waukesha, ran her fastest time ever at the Boston Marathon last year: 3 hours, 36 minutes, in just her fifth marathon overall.

Boyle's first marathon was in 1999 in Chicago, but then she started her family and ran fewer races. She returned to the Lakefront Marathon in 2012 and knew she could qualify for Boston. With her children now 12, 10 and 8 years old, she mostly runs half marathons and 10-kilometer races, but she felt a strong pull to return to Boston.

"I just want to experience it and have a good run," said Boyle. "I think everyone wants to come together and be a part of that special day. I think people are looking at it a little different this year and I just want to be a part of that."

Mixed feelings

Tanem had just finished the race and she was elated. The 46-year-old mother of three from South Milwaukee who works in communications at Johnson Controls has been running for 20 years and has completed more than 50 marathons, mostly around Wisconsin and the Midwest.

But Boston was always in the back of her mind.

"If you're a runner, a marathon runner, there always is this Boston qualifying time," said Tanem. "For the average runner, it's kind of this ultimate goal that's always out there."

She made the time and applied for the race and had to wait months to find out she was accepted for her first Boston Marathon in 2013.

"It was a really big deal," she said.

She finished 20 minutes before the bombs went off, but it took her a while to collect her medal, get checked over by the medical staff, get water and a little nutrition and then get to the gear-check tables.

She spotted her husband, John, back at the end of the race and assumed he was on his way to meet her. But John was stuck in a Summerfest-type crowd, with a mass of people, so he wasn't going anywhere fast. He decided to just soak up the atmosphere.

Then the first bomb detonated.

"And you wonder, what is that? A celebratory firework or something?" said Michelle Tanem.

Then the second bomb exploded.

"And collectively, we all knew it was something. You could see the cloud," said Tanem.

The people around John Tanem began to run. He saw a woman trying to hold on to her three young children. First responders rushed in without regard for their own safety. John helped the best he could, moving people away from danger. He was unharmed.

"We're so, so lucky that he was that close and he didn't get hurt," said Michelle Tanem.

It seemed like it took forever, but Michelle and John did finally meet up and when they did, Michelle's emotions turned on her. The thrill of completing her first Boston vanished.

"The feeling that was strongest for me was guilt," she said. "My husband wouldn't be there if it wasn't for me."

Her three children, ages 8 to 28, weren't at the race — but only because they had just been on a trip the previous week. It all left Tanem feeling sad and hurt but mostly with a powerful sense of guilt.

"Why here, why this environment?" she said. "These are everyday people. They are families and friends everywhere you turn. It's the most celebratory, glorious environment you could ever ask for. It is an international event because Boston is the best-known marathon, and I felt guilty as a runner that all those people were there to support runners like myself. And yet they were all put in danger."

A different Boston

Tabbal took up running seriously at 40, or what his daughter affectionately refers to as his midlife crisis. He'd never run more than 5 miles, but one Lakefront Marathon led to the Green Bay Marathon and a membership in the Badgerland Striders running club and then, Boston.

The 47-year-old engineer for GE Healthcare product services has run the 2009, '11, '12 and '13 Boston Marathons.

Last year, he ran the race in a personal-best time of 3 hours, 18 minutes. Like his friend Gordon, he thought the blasts might have been a dump truck hitting a speed bump, but because Boston is so hospitable to runners, from the moment they land at Logan Airport, Tabbal hardly suspected terrorism.

He expects greater police presence this year, from the staging area and start line to the finish, and more barricades and foot patrol officers.

We know this: It will be the second-largest Boston Marathon ever, behind only the 100th anniversary race in 1996 that had more than 38,000 runners.

The marathon usually caps participation at 25,000 in three waves after the most elite, world-class runners. This year, race officials added a fourth wave and attendance is expected to swell to 36,000 for the 118th Boston Marathon.

Many of the additional runners have been admitted because they are on teams running for charities to raise awareness and funds.

"And that will generate even more excitement," said Tabbal.

An energy Tanem surely feels.

She never doubted she would go back this year. The threat of some horrific repeat stunt is a little scary, sure, but so were the Olympics, and athletes don't stay home under a threat. So she will wear her Run Strong bracelet, which a friend picked up at the Marathon Sports store on Boylston, and the rubber band bracelet her daughter made for her in the race's colors this year: blue, orange and white.

She will be careful, but she will not be stopped.

"I'm to the point where it's time to focus on the positive, and I am looking forward to drawing from the positive energy in Boston," said Tanem.

"And you know how runners are. Whether you are first, last, in the middle, whether you have run a thousand races or this is your first time, every other person around you is cheering for you. Everybody is out there supporting you to achieve your best. It's this incredible, supportive, loving environment.